(CNS News) — When asked whether the Biden administration should work with Facebook to suppress postings it considers vaccine misinformation, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said, “There should be no suppression on the Internet.”
At the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, CNS News asked the senator, “Should the Biden administration work with Facebook to suppress any postings they consider to be vaccine misinformation?”
Sen. Tuberville said, “Well, there should be no suppression on the Internet. All the information needs to be out there where people can make the right decision. Obviously, gotta’ dig through the information that’s wrong – there’s always some wrong information out there – but surely we can find enough that’s right.”
President Joe Biden was asked on Friday, July 16, about social media platforms like Facebook and the alleged spread of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.
“They’re killing people,” Biden claimed. “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they’re killing people.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told CNS News during her press conference on Monday that the White House has “not asked Facebook to block any individual posts,” but the Biden administration “certainly raised where we have concerns about information that’s inaccurate, that is traveling out there in whatever platform it’s traveling on.”
On July16, Psaki said the administration is “in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team, given, as [U.S. Surgeon General] Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic.”
As the federal government, she said, “We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s office. We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”
“You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others, uh – if you – for providing misinformation out there,” said Psaki.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) responded to her comments by stating on Twitter, “Her statement makes it abundantly clear they want people banned for simply disagreeing with the government’s pre-approved narrative.”